Malcolm X’s three daughters joined civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump on Saturday to reveal that what they say is evidence that proves the NYPD and the FBI conspired to have him murdered.
The civil rights activist and prominent figure in the Nation of Islam was murdered in the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan in February 1965.
The relatives and Crump said the charges were in a deathbed letter from a former police officer, Raymond Wood.
In the letter dated January 25, 2011, Wood, who was on duty on the day of Malcolm X’s death, said he “participated in actions that in retrospect were regrettable and detrimental to the progress of my own black people.”
“Under the direction of my counselors, I was told to encourage leaders and members of civil rights groups to commit crimes,” Wood said in the letter.
Wood stated that he was forced by his NYPD supervisors to trick members of Malcolm X’s security detail into committing crimes that resulted in their arrest days before the deadly shooting.
“My assignment was to induce the two men to commit a crime so that they could be arrested by the FBI and kept away from Malcolm X security on February 21, 1965,” Wood wrote. “I didn’t know at the time that Malcolm X was the target.”
Those arrests were part of a conspiracy between the NYPD and the FBI to have Malcolm X murdered, according to the letter.
Malcolm X was a human rights activist and prominent black nationalist leader who served as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam, an African-American Muslim group that embraced black separatism in the 1950s and 1960s. Malcolm X, a skilled orator, encouraged black people to fight against racism by any means possible.
The civil rights leader broke from the Nation of Islam shortly before his killing in the ballroom, where he prepared to address the Organization of African American Unity. Three members of the Nation of Islam were convicted in the shooting.
Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s office began reviewing the convictions last year.
Following Saturday’s press conference, Vance’s office released a statement saying “that the review of this issue is active and underway”. The NYPD also issued a statement saying that it has “provided all available data relevant to that case to the prosecutor” and “remains committed to assisting in that assessment in any way.”
Malcolm X’s daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz, said she has always felt insecure about her father’s death.
“Any evidence that provides further insight into the truth behind that terrible tragedy must be thoroughly investigated,” she said at the press conference.